Earth Formation/Plate Tectonics

The dynamics of earth interior is filled with interior heat that allows earth to change environment. This is where Plate Tectonics comes in play. As Wolrdatlas.com (2025) points out, the theory of plate tectonics explains how the geosphere is connected with mantle convection and creates plate boundaries. Water plays an important role on plate tectonics. Water itself is not the only element that plays an important role, but the fact that water flows through rocks that are in its way and that allows rocks to bend and slide with one another. This geological process is called subduction. According to www.usgs.gov (2022), this process allows one tectonic plate to move under another tectonic plate and causes one of them to sink under the mantle. this process is called convergent boundaries, where an oceanic plate is forced beneath a continental plate. 

Guatemala is divided into two major tectonic blocks. The Mayan block and Basin block. The Maya block contains They are placed side by side along the Motagua Valley fault zone. Tikal Peten National Park is part of the Mayan Block. According to "UW-L Journal of Undergraduate Research X (2007)", the plate tectonics of Guatemala are characterized by Caribbean and the Cocos plate. This causes a crack in the mantals, and it forms volcanoes. This subduction of the Cocos plate beneath the Carribean plate creates the Central America volcanic arc.

TIkal Peten National Park is part of a large basin that formed due to the tectonic and geological processes. Marine processes during the early Cretaceous period led to the formation of shelf carbonates in central and northern Guatemala, including areas around Tikal, Peten. Tectonic quiescence and continental erosion in the Paleocene allowed for further foredeep subsidence and deposition of the Peten group over the Verapaz group which is in Petes lower Eocene.